The other day on reddit there was a discussion about the 40k setting that stuck with me. The original poster (OP) felt that GW should not advance a storyline that would disrupt the setting, and then proceeded to rant that if they hadn't already, they were dangerously close. I agreed with many points the OP made, but I was curious to see for myself how the setting has evolved since 1st Edition Rogue Trader days, if it was true that the setting had changed in fundamental ways, and finally to see if it was in peril.
Also, maybe most annoyingly, it seemed some people that had replied with statements about Rogue Trader that I thought were untrue - that it was just light and humorous and that we didn't see the 'true grimdark' until a few editions later. Let me dispel that one right away - Rogue Trader 1987 was the original grimdark: from the haunting illustrations by Will Rees and others to the black ships gathering up psykers to feed to the Astronomican and to the Emperor to keep things running - it was all there and quite disturbing for my 8 yr old self to have been reading back then (note: I don't remember when I discovered it, but I want to say it was around 1988 so I would have been about 7 or 8). For sure there was a lot more fun and humor to balance it out and maybe also establish that the whole thing was satire - something that I worry has been lost over the years - but I think the humor makes the grimdark the darkest.
But to the main questions - it would be impossible for me to go over everything written of course, so I focused just on comparing the 1st and latest (9th) edition 40k rule books which anyway do a decent job of summarizing 'the setting' - What has changed over all? Has the setting ever changed fundamentally? And finally, is there something that looks like it might push it over the edge?
So first what is the setting fundamentally? I would argue that it is the following:
- There is an Imperium of Man that spans the galaxy in the 41st (well now 42nd) millennium. It represents countless worlds and untold trillions of lives.
- The Imperium is beset on all sides from danger, but perhaps the greatest peril is from within. It is a dark time where some humans are beginning to manifest strange psychic powers.
- This Imperium was forged by one 'man,' the Emperor 10,000 years ago, through incredible force of will and psychic abilities that make him perhaps the most powerful being in the galaxy.
- ...but for 10,000 years he has been interred into the Golden Throne on Terra in order to protect humanity and direct space travel with his powers.
- Humanity travels the vastness of space by entering 'The Warp,' a place of raw psyker energy, and specialized psyker navigators are able to pilot ships with the aid of the Astromomican, which is the beacon on Terra that the Emperor uses to project into the void.
- The Astronomican and the Golden Throne must consume thousands of psykers per day to keep running, and so the Black Ships must continuously bring psykers from across the Imperium in to be sacrificed. (yikes this is dark and grim... hmmm)
- It is ambiguous as so whether the Emperor is 'alive' - he can no longer communicate in any way, but Astronomican keeps running. And so the High Lords of Terra atop the massive bureaucracy of the Imperium run everything with a strict, stagnant authoritarian regime.
- A state religion has formed that worships the Emperor as a god and intertwines with the bureaucracy. Science and advancement are replaced by blind faith and incuriosity. The Inquisition acts autonomously to root out pykers, traitors, heretics, and xenos.
- Oh yeah, Xenos - there is other life in the galaxy.
And so that's about it. And its also summarized nicely on the 2nd page of Rogue Trader:
So yeah, that is the setting. How has this evolved?
1. Chaos and the Horus Heresy - This change was introduced very early in the Slaves to Darkness book. It seems according to Rick Priestley, Chaos was basically described in RT without using the word, so when they introduced Slaves to Darkness they filled in more detail but it seems the fundamental setting didn't change. Additionally, when it was revealed that there were traitors 10,000 years ago (with Horus as the most infamous) and so there are traitors today - it added a lot more background and slightly altered the reason for the Emperor being incapacitated and entering the Golden Throne - but perhaps that again doesn't alter the setting much. What it did do is provide some cool gaming material for players who only had imperial armies (which was very common in the early days). Now they could 'accuse' the each other as being a traitor - and so someone could use the Chaos rules to add flavor. It does seem there is less emphasis on the Inquisition rooting out uncontrolled psykers (to 'protect humanity' or actually just send to the black ships) or finding general corruption/non-compliance. Now everything that isn't the will of the Imperium is just Chaos Traitors doing Chaos things. It does tend to over-simplify things for people that dont deeply read/follow all of the material, but I guess that happens when you have a thing that goes for almost 40 years. I like how RT really invites you to expand the setting with your own ideas though, so in my head everything that occurs in RT still happens, but GW just doesn't focus on it as much.
2. More Xenos - In the early days it was the Imperium vs the rest. But there wasn't much else, a few orks and some space elves. But don't get me wrong, RT described a vast galaxy of Xenos - genestealers, Slaan, various warp entities (which as in bullet one got elaborated to mean Chaos Demons) - but aside from mentions there wasn't a lot to build on, and you had to piece together army lists for yourself. So, over the years we've seen factions fleshed out, and some reimagined (Oldcrons -> Necrons), and some new ones added. Honestly it's great, I've met several 40k players that never play as Imperials, and so I would say it hasn't changed the setting, just expanded it.
3. The Founding Space Marine Chapters - This one is a bit minor, but in RT they give examples of many of the one thousand chapters and highlight 12: The Blood Angles, the Blood Drinkers, the Crimson Fists, the Dark Angels, the Flesh Eaters, the Flesh Tearers, the Iron Hands, the Rainbow Warriors, the Silver Skulls, the Spacewolves, the Ultramarines, and the White Scars. But when they imagined the Horus Heresy they added in Primarchs and established the First Founding. Its really cool that the II and XI legions are redacted to give room for players to create their own chapters still, but it did limit the space a bit. Still it filled in a lot of details and such, but I'm kind of annoyed that the Flesh Eaters, Flesh Tearers, and Rainbow Warriors didn't get established as part of the First Founding. So I always considered them to be in there as well, but the records were damaged. Its interesting though because the iconography for the Flesh Eaters and the Rainbow Warriors got modified and used for the World Eaters and the Emperor's Children. Its also sad that the Crimson Fists - who were featured on the RT cover got demoted to a later founding in place of the Imperial Fists - but I think it was to get more colors into the color schemes. On the Primarchs - lets cover that in another point, but establishing Founding chapters and retconning some of them didn't change the setting much, just added content.
4. The Primarchs - These were added with Horus early on. Since they were dead and gone for a long time it just established more history and lore without changing the setting much. But by brining back Roboute Guilliman in 999.M41 - has that disrupted the Setting? Well maybe we can explore that more, I will say that I think the High Lords of Terra would find Robby G a threat to their power and status quo and so I would argue that he would get labeled as a heretic and that he wouldn't be able to get anywhere near the Imperial Palace - unless the Emperor does still have some power left? So anyway he gets promoted to lead the High Lords of Terra (Lord Commander and Imperial Regent, first among equals on the Senatorum Imperialis). Does this change the setting? Well no, because the High Lords of Terra already were running the show, and despite my skepticism that they would have allowed him in, it doesn't really change the setting in a significant way. One might argue that it adds hope, and that Robby G is a stand up guy and will lead to a brighter (ie less grimdark) imperium. But unless he switches off the Astronomican and unplugs his dad, then he's still sending 1000s of psykers into 'meet their god' everyday - which still is super dark and terrible.
5. Cawl and the Primaris - Ok this one is tough. Forever GW has taken flak for the scale issues with some of the miniatures. Specifically, Space Marines were basically the same size as Imperial Guard troops, but yet they were supposed to be supermen. And so people loudly wanted 'truescale' marines. What GW did was basically the best they could - they introduced 'truescale' Space Marines in a way that did not cause old armies (such as mine) to suddenly become invalid. But in order to have the units appear in the game together (but not mixed in units) they came up with this whole convuluted story of the Primaris Space Marine. To be fair, I think it was a fine line and I appreciate that they didn't void out my army that I spent literal decades collecting and painting. So the story is that Archmagos Cawl spent 10,000 years making superduper men. Would these Super Space Marines truly stand next to plain old firstborn marines and be accepted? Much like my point above, I think Roboute, and therefore Cawl and the Primaris, would be seen by a stagnant Imperium as imposters, traitors or Chaos tricks from the warp, or at least branded as such because they would be a threat to the High Lords. But, I dunno, if the Emperor still is able to influence things maybe he gave the nudge? Personally I like to think of the Emperor as Schrodinger's Cat - and its ambiguous if he is really alive or whether the Astronomican and Throne are just running on technology alone now. Does this fundamentally change the setting? I mean it does make me question a bit how the High Lords and Inquisition work to maintain this stagnant, unchanging imperium for 10,000 if this changes overnight. Also, it is curious that in a dark time of no technological advancement for millennia, we have this, but at the same time - it seems that the original RT book opened the door to studying Xeno tech and some advancement in technology for the very highest elites. So I would say this one is a fine line. Probably it breaks from some of the more rigid rules established in later editions of the setting, but RT was perhaps a bit more lenient in this regard - I mean they did let you just whip up any sort of hover tank you wanted, even ones made out of deodorant!
6. The Fall of Cadia and Eye of Terror becomes the Great Rift - This one is simple to me - does not change the setting at all. Yes events have happened, right now the Warp has expanded more into real space and cut-off a big chunk of the Imperium - but this is bread and butter 'the setting.' RT establishes that parts and even vast swaths of the Imperium have to deal with bad warp storms all the time, even ones that last decades or centuries. So, here it's happening. And last I heard, there is only war, so sometimes the Imperium loses battles (Cadia had a good run). In my head cannon I think that the Imperium loses a lot more than it wins, and it just keeps expanding to offset the losses, and news otherwise is pure Imperial propaganda. Also that Space Marines are stoic and brave, but are still no match for most of the stuff out there and lose a lot more than is let on (at least thats my tabletop experience haha). To me, this keeps things from getting stale, but doesn't change the setting. We're still on a knife's edge, beset on all sides, from within and without, etc etc.
So what have I missed? I'm sure I've missed some differences, but on the whole it seems after looking at the first and latest rule books, the fundamentals are largely the same, just fleshed out. Of course there's always the risk with any franchise that the IP owners will send it off a cliff, but even if they do, I still have my minis and all the old rule books, and so I can return to MY grim dark 41st millennium any time I want.
